Slow-acting fast broadband.

ThisIsWeird

Hi.

I've had Vodafone Fibre for at least a year, and it hums along at roughly 70+ Mb/s, waaay more than enough for my needs.

And yet, web page loads are hesitant at times, including MSE. Not all the time, but almost certainly at some points whenever I'm on the 'net.

The MSE site can take a few seconds to load from the bookmark, and then - when writing replies - it can fail to respond when I click on 'save draft' or even 'post' - nothing happens, and I may need to wait seconds before it does the task. Other times it freezes to the point I need to reload.

And other times it hums along just fine.

Everything is like this - Google Mail, eBay, whatevs. It's just so hesitant.

And the same happens whether Firefoxing or Chroming. And, MSE on my phone can be ditto - sometimes working quickly, other times dragging its scroll bar.

What could be the cause?

Thanks.

(Right now it's working great - grrrr )

Keep_pedalling

The MSE website is very flaky and often slows down or grinds to a halt.

Browntoa

Throttling by Vodafone is one cause 

They haven't got the capacity in your area so the traffic from the exchange is restricted ( your connection speed is yo the exchange, not onwards)

Try using speedtest when it's lagging, it gives a much better breakdown of jitter etc 

Then run it again when ok for comparison 

phillw

Its like phoning Lamborghini and saying, I'm only able to drive at 30mph. Maybe there is other traffic, maybe there is a fault with the car.

The connection to your house might be 70mbs, but the you will quickly be on a line shared by 50 people and it won't be 50x70. It could be 50x7. By the time you get to MSE, you are on a line shared by thousands at peak times.

If you are using WiFi then router placement can make a huge difference. I fixed slow broadband at someone's house where they had the router under the stairs, surrounded by boxes.

It can help if there is a pattern, as you can just avoid those times. 

booneruk

There could be multiple things going on.

I'd rule out using MSE to judge your internet against though. As others have mentioned, it's very flaky right now.

It could be your Wifi acting up. You can use an ethernet cable to connect if you wanted to rule that one out (wait until the internet feels bad, then switch to ethernet - does it suddenly improve?)

Your line could have some noise on it, or other impediments upstream that introduce higher latency (that is the gap between your computer requesting something and it starting to be delivered). Your internet connection will always have contention too, that is others in your area using the service at the same time.

I'd suggest taking a look at some tests you can run at https://www.speedtest.net/

Take one when everything's fine, and then perform another when it's not. Aside from the headline download and upload speeds, you'll also have 3 latency tests. I've ringed these in my screenshot below. The higher the values here, the more laggy your experience will feel.

ThisIsWeird

Thanks all.

I'll try the 'speedtest'.

I should have mentioned - I have a Cat cable running to my PC, so not using WiFi. My phone obviously uses WiFi, but most of the time that is quick too.

Pleased some others have found the MSE site a bit flaky at times too. Right now it's hummin', but other times it practically freezes, or takes many seconds for a page to load. I'll try and 'speedtest' at these times.

Cheers.

ThisIsWeird

First 'speedtest' gave similar down and ups of 74 and 20 as before with BBspeedchecker, but nearly half the ping at 12ms (previously 21)

I'll try and repeat when things are dodge.

Cheers.

prowla

phillw said:

Its like phoning Lamborghini and saying, I'm only able to drive at 30mph. Maybe there is other traffic, maybe there is a fault with the car.

The connection to your house might be 70mbs, but the you will quickly be on a line shared by 50 people and it won't be 50x70. It could be 50x7. By the time you get to MSE, you are on a line shared by thousands at peak times.

If you are using WiFi then router placement can make a huge difference. I fixed slow broadband at someone's house where they had the router under the stairs, surrounded by boxes.

It can help if there is a pattern, as you can just avoid those times. 

Bitrates are expressed in Mbps.

JSmithy45AD

ThisIsWeird said:

First 'speedtest' gave similar down and ups of 74 and 20 as before with BBspeedchecker, but nearly half the ping at 12ms (previously 21)

I'll try and repeat when things are dodge.

Cheers.

I get around 275Mbps via a very solid VM connection and MSE has been all over the place recently. That said Chrome started acting very odd everywhere yesterday so I've cleared browsing history for all time today which won't do you any harm.

wongataa

ThisIsWeird said:

What could be the cause?

Thanks.

Congestion on the internet.  Problems with the servers hosting the site in question.  Internet traffic routing issues.

Just because your connection to your ISP is nice and fast doesn't mean that various website's connections to the internet are always fast.  There is lots of traffic out there and you can't always use your max speed.

M25

Do several speed tests day and night. Could be congestion at prime times (after school and 2100hrs). Any aditional security/anti-virus software on your computer?

https://www.fast.com is handy too.